Fifty Dead Men Walking (2008)

Between headaches, a bad flu/bronchitis and tons of work ( yes, I complain again :) ), I've found some time to watch a movie last weekend. "Fifty Dead Men Walking" wasn't though a choice to leave me too much to comment ...

What we have here is a thriller based on a real case, of Martin McGartland. Born in Belfast, somewhere around the age of 17-18 the guy is recruited by IRA in the context of the Northern Ireland conflicts, and also in parallel gets a "job" on the special branch of the British security service. Like that, for something like two years he makes a double play, pretty tensed, delivering sufficient info about the attacks planned by IRA in order to save an estimated number of 50 potential victims. That's behind the movie title. Since obviously, the failures related with bombs found before time, operations discovered by the peace forces, etc start to get suspicious, the informer is discovered at a certain point. From which point, I'll restrain from further comments since it's probably the most spectacular part, which though not very long it fits perfectly with the cliche of "life beats the movie".

As idea, the character is still alive, and still running from the IRA revenge, hiding apparently somewhere in UK. The movie is based on one of his two books, book on which the opinions are split ranging from hero who sacrificed his life to an oportunist who romanced enough the subject to get a living from it. In any case, it seems that the author's feedback to the movie is that it's as close to the truth as Earth is to Pluto. So, let's get back to the movie making part, because for the real stuff, the situation seems a bit fuzzy :)

The movie is ok as thriller, but I can't say that I was even near to be blown away by it (no pun intended). It's not a high budget production, and the best part of it is probably the casting. The lead role played by Jim Sturgess is very good, but despite the critics the part that got my attention was the one of Ben Kingsley in the position of the connection with the British services. Maybe because it pleasantly reminded me about another movie "The Assignment" where he had a sort of similar part on a variation of a story based on Carlos the Jackal. I don't have any other comments, besides that it deserves your time if you want something to have both action and drama at a level good enough to fill you an afternoon or weekend evening.

Rating: 3 out of 5